Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive
a vehicle:
Judgment
Muscular Coordination
0 Vision
Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths
are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving.
In recent years, some 17,000 annual motor
vehicle-related deaths have been associated with the use
of alcohol, with more than
300,000 people injured.
Many adults
-- by some estimates, nearly half the adult
population
-- choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under 21,
it’s
against the law in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There
are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws. The obvious
way to solve this highway safety problem
is for people never to drink alcohol and then drive. But
what
if people do? How much is “too much” if the
driver plans to drive? It’s a lot less than many might
think. Although it depends
on each person and situation,
here
is some general information on the problem.
The Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC)
of someone
who is drinking depends upon four things:
0 The amount of alcohol consumed
The drinker’s body weight
0 The amount of food that is consumed before and
during drinking
consume the alcohol.
0 The length of time it has taken the drinker to
According to the American Medical Association, a
180-lb. (82 kg) person who drinks three 12-ounce
(355 ml) bottles of beer in an hour will end up with a
BAC of about
0.06 percent. The person would reach the
same BAC by drinking three 4-ounce (120 ml) glasses
of wine or three mixed drinks if each had 1 - 1/2 ounces
(45 ml) of a liquor like whiskey, gin or vodka.
4-3
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